weekend review

Well, the big news of the weekend was the bad news of the weekend: James Robinson's decision to go to Pittsburgh instead of UVA.  Damn you Pittsburgh for stealing Cam Saddler and what was that other guy's name in football and now the one guy that would've fit like the last puzzle piece from our basketball team.  Right out of our backyard.  Tony Bennett is assembling a lot of talent for the coming years, and a point guard like Robinson would've fit like a glove.  Not least because Sammy Zeglinski leaves after this year and that means 2012 we have Jontel Evans and nobody else manning the point.  Malcolm Brogdon may get a look but that's not ideal.  What to do now?  The staff will go after L.J. Rose, probably with the fullest-court press imaginable, but that's not a likely proposition.  Chances are either they grit their teeth for 2012 and try to make the most of it with Evans and whoever else can handle a ball - or they take a fallback option and try to turn mid-major talent into an ACC player.  Either way, the 2013 PG crop (Nate Britt, Big Cat Barber, etc.) just became the most important recruiting challenge Tony Bennett's yet had in his UVA career.

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Fall camp chugs on, and so do position switches, and this means we need a depth chart update.  Last week we covered Ryan Cobb's departure and Zach Swanson's move to fullback (the latter may have happened before the former, and if so might well have precipitated it) and this week, the dominos keep falling into place:

- Demetrious Nicholson won himself the starting cornerback job opposite Chase Minnifield.  That puts Rijo Walker in a bit of a playing time bind, as the coaches think highly of Dom Joseph.  Joseph could play safety, if necessary, but that wouldn't be ideal because there's a crying need to develop playable depth at safety for 2012 and beyond.  Right now the backups are LoVante' Battle and Pablo Alvarez, neither of whom have anything resembling decent game experience at safety.

- Vincent Croce, to nobody's surprise, moves to DT from DE.  Redshirt year is a lock barring an epic DT disaster, because he needs to pack on the pounds.

- The same article is primarily about Ausar Walcott's move back to linebacker.  The stay at defensive end?  More a wake-up call to Walcott than anything else.  Get him out of his comfort zone, remind him that his position on the team is not to be taken for granted.  Though he's been running with the third-team defense, it wouldn't surprise to see him make a leapfrog move or two up the depth chart as the season goes on.

- A few other changes have been made, most notably listing Landon Bradley as injured, and shuffling the quarterbacks.  London hasn't come out and said it, but for all purposes now, Mike Rocco is your starter.  The backup hasn't been really decided yet, I don't think, but for now it's David Watford since that's where the reps are going.

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Another sign that football season approaches: for some, it's already started.  It's weird that seasons start earlier in the South and later as you go north, which I guess a Southerner would say that's because they give a shit down there.  Me, if I were being recruited for college football, not doing my conditioning drills in 500 percent humidity would be a real attraction, and I'd feel awful weird about being done with the regular season before Halloween.  But Georgia is Georgia (or Jawjuh depending on your perspective), and that's where we go for the first edition of Senior Seasons this year.

In case you're wondering, this is the part of the every-Monday weekend review where I check in on how our commitments did in their game that weekend.  Only one this week....

Buford 42, Blessed Trinity 0: This is C.J. Moore, who had a nice game with an interception and a 33-yard touchdown catch.  Buford has won four straight state championships at the AA level in Georgia, which goes from A to 5A.

Despite also living in Georgia, Greyson Lambert waits til next week to start his season, but in a scrimmage a week ago he threw for 192 yards and three touchdowns in one half, before the scrimmage was called for weather.

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I leave you til tomorrow with the most unintentionally ironic thing that has ever or will ever emerge from an ESPN the Magazine article, in this case primarily about Ohio State president Gordon Gee:

At Miami, president Donna Shalala personally hires each coach.  She studies the NCAA rulebook and weekly compliance reports.  During football games, she scours the sidelines for suspicious guests.  "I'm on alert all the time," she says.

You could not have timed this quote better with a stopwatch.  How's that 24/7 alert status working out?

questions at camp for the defense

Continuation of Wednesday's post in which we asked similar questions about the offense.  Here we'll look at the defense and what questions need to be answered in the coming weeks.

1. Can Rijo Walker seize the starting cornerback job opposite Chase Minnifield?

This is probably his big chance.  He's done some impressive work for the coaches in the past year, enough to be currently listed as the starter, but now he'll have to fend off two freshman phenoms, and compete with senior Dom Joseph besides.  Joseph is solid but limited, and freshmen, no matter how talented, end up torched by a wily senior receiver sooner or later.  Now that Walker's been around the block once, having him ready to get the bulk of the starters' minutes is probably the best-case scenario for the defense.  If he can't jump on the job this year, Demetrious Nicholson and Brandon Phelps may ensure he never gets another chance.

2. Is Cam Johnson a holy terror?

Every year with Johnson has been the same: we're pleased with what he's done this year and expect more next year.  Unless Jake Snyder has a few surprises in his hat, Johnson is the defense's only real shot at having a QB-terrorizing pass rusher on the end.  He's easily the best athlete on the line.  Chris Long almost singlehandedly dragged his 2007 team to a New Year's bowl game, so if Cam Johnson lives up to his best potential, he could be worth a win or two.  Truthfully, this question won't be properly answered until a few games into the season, but if Morgan Moses can't handle Johnson in camp, not many opposing tackles will, either.

3. Where will the freshmen get slotted?

There are a ton of DEs and DBs on the roster in the freshman section.  Camp will be the first step in figuring out where the best position for some of these guys are - guys like Kameron Mack, Anthony Harris, Marco Jones, and Rob Burns, among others.

4. Have we found a workable linebacker combo?

The switch to the 4-3 still hasn't seen much settling down in the middle, as the coaches have done some experimenting with the lineup over the past year.  Laroy Reynolds was switched to the weak side, Aaron Taliaferro moved to the outside from the middle, and Steve Greer still seems to be stuck in a platoon, the latter being much to the chagrin of many fans - including myself - who think Greer is good enough to be an every-down player.  Meanwhile, former starter Ausar Walcott is now a DE and LoVante' Battle was moved back to the secondary.  Certain other players are breathing down the necks of the nominal starters.  There's not a fluxier unit on the roster outside of the quarterbacks.

5. Can we run any semblance of a secondary at all if a ton of freshmen are involved?  Because it still looks awfully thin behind the starters.

*shudder*

questions and unanswers

Spring practice wrapped up with the spring scrimmage on Saturday, which means that super-obsessive football fans have nothing to do until August and everyone else stopped ignoring spring practice. As a baseball player way back in high school I had a coach who liked to say, "Everyone looks good in the cage." I think that's sage advice, and so I don't obsess over who looks good and who beat who in spring practice, because they all looked pretty damn good last year in the spring and then we went 3-9 and fired the coach.

That said, however, spring can answer a few questions for us. So today I'll put my best foot forward in seeing what spring ball might have settled, and what remains to be seen.

Questions we now have answers to:

- Who's going to start at quarterback against Richmond?

That would be Marc Verica. I wish I wish I wish I could find the Jeff White article that more or less let it slip, but I can't - something about how the coaches were having a pretty spirited backup battle between Ross Metheny and Michael Strauss. Verica didn't blow away the competition, but his experience gave him a major leg up and he'll have to implode in the August to lose the job.

- What will the uniforms look like?

"Oregon of the East" caused a lot of consternation among tradition-minded fans (like me) who didn't really like the idea of diamond-plate patterns, random striping all over the place, or dressing like the Oakland Raiders when your school colors are those of the Green Bay Packers. Basically, those of us who don't want a clown show to take the field where the football team is supposed to. Fortunately, there's a much simpler, classier approach in place and we can step back from the ledge now.

- Will the offense still suck?

I think most folks are optimistically willing to keep this in the "unanswered" category, but in good conscience, I can't. The spring game generated two articles about the lousy offense on display - Verica was 8 for 23 and the entire running game stunk. And this was against a defense learning a totally brand-new playbook, featuring many players in entirely brand-new positions. This offense is going to need stability before it turns into something that coaches have to bother game-planning against, and that means a lot more than half a year figuring it out.

- How will the change to the 4-3 affect the defensive positioning?

You already knew some people were getting shuffled around, but moving Ausar Walcott and LoVante' Battle from safety to linebacker (which thanks to the alignment change already had a glut) necessitated even more movement. Mostly we know how that goes now:

* Walcott and Battle are outside linebackers.
* Terrence Fells-Danzer is a fullback, and Cam Johnson, Jeremiah Mathis, and Billy Schautz - all former linebackers - are defensive ends.
* Matt Conrath and Brent Urban are defensive tackles.

I'm still not sure I'm big on moving Walcott and Battle, by the way. Speed on defense is a good thing, but so is a depth chart in the secondary, where we're awfully thin. And we're even thinner at DT - I count four, which means there's no two-deep if even one goes down - so I expect at least one more move there. Wouldn't surprise me if incoming freshman Stephen Lawe finds himself on defense come fall camp.

Alright, but it wouldn't be any fun if we knew everything. Here's what remains to be seen:

- Who's going to start at quarterback in mid-October?

Verica has likely established himself as the first option, but not as the kind of guy who puts a deathgrip on a job. If we're an uncompetitive 2-3 (or, horrors, 1-4, meaning a Richmond loss) coming out of what'll probably be a total catastrophe of an Atlanta trip in October, you know it'll start to be time for a quarterback switch. Barring Richmond becoming the new William & Mary, Verica will probably keep the job throughout September because the competition isn't good enough (or is way too damn good) to properly gauge how the season is going. FSU and GT as the first two October games will be a much better yardstick as to whether we should start looking at the future.

- What will the running back depth chart look like?

Pure chaos right now, that's what. There are seven options here: Raynard Horne, Keith Payne, Torrey Mack, Perry Jones, Dominique Wallace, K.P. Parks, and Khalek Shepherd, and only four of them participated fully in spring practice and none of those four really grabbed hold of the job. Why don't we know anything?

* Horne has never really been much more than a change-up back, in to spell the starters.
* We really kind of know what Payne is capable of, and honestly it's not stardom.
* Mack flashed a lot of talent in spring ball last year but couldn't pass-block to save his life (and definitely not his quarterback's), thus whenever he was in the game, defenses keyed on the run.
* Jones is the size of the period at the end of this sentence, and not going to be an every-down guy, ever.
* Wallace might have the best size/speed combination but is still recovering from last season's injury.
* Parks and Shepherd ain't even here yet.

I don't see Horne, Payne, or Jones being #1 options. Any one of them might make a great change-of-pace type but they're not toting the load. There's a great chance here for Parks - who just might be the most talented of the bunch - to step in and make his name. Shepherd, too.

- Is the defense that awesome or is the offense that bad?

Such is the nature of spring practice that you can never really tell, unless you have a coach's eye, whether good results are really good results, or just bad news for the other side of the ball. The defense does remain highly talented, however, and I think they'll still look about as good as they did last year. But with the alignment switch, you never know.

- Who's the placekicker?

London said he'd pick one that would be the starter going into fall camp, but he hasn't told us who.

So with all that, I've updated the depth chart for ya, and today's addition of Ross Burbank to the commitment list (less than a week after his offer - this is a guy who definitely wanted to be a Hoo) merits a recruiting board update too. The depth chart, by the way, has one tiny format change: no more walk-ons, for the most part. It got to be annoying to track the comings and goings. If they've got a real shot to actually participate (Matt Snyder, for example, or the kickers) then they're still on there, but the ones who aren't a threat to see the field aren't there any more. Should be easier to track that way.

Tomorrow: uniforms!

spring practice primer

Ten or fifteen years ago, a lot of fans likely didn't even know spring practice existed. Fewer cable channels meant there were only so many cameras, and so the coaches had the chance to conduct some practices while the prying eyes were trained on baseball's Opening Day and the waning days of the NBA and NHL seasons. People know about spring ball now. They know about it good and hard.

But before we get to the spring practice primer, in which I'll offer up my take on what kind of drama we can expect to see position by position, your daily dose of basketball coach rumormongering:

First, we put to rest once and for all the notion that players were disgruntled about playing for Leitao. They're disgruntled now, yes. There will be transfers, you can be sure of that, and some guys we were hoping to count on next year might end up gone. Sylven Landesberg, Jeff Jones, Mike Scott, and Sammy Zeglinski all vowed to stay. Not that I don't believe them, but there's much that will change between now and then. I hope they stay. I won't be surprised if one changes his mind, and I'll be less surprised when - not if - somebody does transfer, or ask out of their LOI.

Another very similar take on the situation. Mike Scott was the source of a quote last year (and I wish I wish I wish I could find the article again but I cannot) that gave ammo to the "players don't like Leitao" camp. This, I believe, refutes that 110%.

Jim Young at the ACC Sports Journal proposes Siena's Fran McCaffrey as a cheaper alternative to the Big Three floating around out there. The four major points:

- Cheaper
- Good resume
- Recruits well
- Knows Littlepage (and Littlepage knows him)

First point, agreed 100% - as I said earlier, it will take megabux to lure the big name we want. But is it really wise to go the cheaper route? I'm not sure fans would be enamored of that idea. This was a pretty bold leap, firing Leitao at a juncture like this, and all kinds of the wrong messages will be sent to the fanbase.

Not that McCaffrey couldn't necessarily do a good job. I think recruiting to a place like Siena is one of the toughest recruiting jobs in all of college. There are no less than 22 D-I schools in the state of New York. At Siena, first you have to identify the players good enough to lead you to a conference championship but not good enough to activate the radars on the big-time programs (you're smack in the middle of Big East-land) or even the medium-time programs (you're also smack in the middle of Atlantic-10-land.) You pretty much have to go to New York City to do this, although McCaffrey has also been able to snag some quality talent out of Philly and DC. Then you have to convince them to go to Siena and not any of the other 21 schools in the state that are also in touch with them, like, say, Iona, all of which are pretty much the same to a basketball-playing kid in NYC. Or for that matter, any of the schools in New Jersey or Pennsylvania or New England, all of which also want in to NYC. In short, you can't really sell Siena. You have to sell you. If McCaffrey can consistently bring conference championship-winning talent to Siena, then I'm on board with the idea that he can recruit to UVA.

So this is not a knock against McCaffrey, but there is more proven talent out there, and it's been made known even at this early juncture that there is a Big Three that the school is interested in. If we hire McCaffrey, it means Littlepage didn't have his ducks properly in a row before pushing Leitao out the door, or failed to close a deal with three separate coaches, and ought to be fired his own self.

Criminitly. This stuff is long enough to be its own post. But we're pressing ahead with spring football, because that starts Saturday and this post is a long time in the making. Position by position, here we go with the position battles, and keep in mind this is for spring practice, which means don't worry about the incoming recruiting class cause they ain't here yet.

Offensive line

Drama: Very low. Four starters (Shields, Cabbell, Pasztor, Barker) return, as do most backups, and the one vacancy at left tackle will be immediately filled by Landon Bradley. Rather than fighting for a spot on the depth chart, these players will be able to focus almost exclusively on continuing to gel as a unit and learning the new blocking schemes that Gregg Brandon brings. This unit will generate the fewest stories during spring practice as long as they stay the hell away from Club 216, but that means they'll also be the biggest reason for our mighty ascendance to glory in the fall.

Running back

Drama: Pretty low. Mikell Simpson appears set as the feature back, as the new offense appears tailor-made for his talents. But he's not durable enough to be a workhorse, so whoever earns the backup job will see his share of carries. Raynard Horne has experience, but Torrey Mack brings the talent and a football-playin', Pro Bowl-sounding kinda name. Sooner or later Mack will be carrying the load and I'm looking forward to that day.

Wide receiver

Drama: Lowish, but mainly because there's room for everyone. There will only be five scholarship receivers on the roster for spring, so they should all see lots of reps. Brandon's offense requires having a big fat load of receivers available and the question is not so much who gets on the field but who's the best at getting open once there.

Tight end

Drama: Low. With Andrew Devlin's move to defensive end, Joe Torchia becomes the starter by default. The main thing will not be whether the tight end's role is reduced in this offense but by how much.

Quarterback

Drama: Astronomically galactic. We don't even know who all the horses are in this race. Does Vic Hall get treated as a cornerback that sometimes lines up under center, or a quarterback that can play defense? Jameel Sewell has earned the staff's trust and the fans' respect by working hard to come back to the team, and his talents appear well-suited for this new offense. Marc Verica still throws that oh-so-nice ball though, and if he shows in spring camp that he knows where the defenders are this time around, the superior passing touch that he brings as compared to Sewell can't be ignored. And how big will Hall's WildCav package be? Expect the paparazzi to be all over this one and for it not to be settled even the tiniest bit by the end of spring practice.

Defensive line

Drama: Medium. A clearcut, good old-fashioned position battle is shaping up between Devlin and Zane Parr at defensive end. Winner starts. Matt Conrath is firmly entrenched on the other side. Nick Jenkins and Nate Collins will likely split the duties at nose tackle just as they did last year, but it'll be interesting to see how much Buddy Ruff can horn in on their fun.

Linebacker

Drama: Pretty bloody high. There are a lot of open spots but a lot more dogs in this fight. Denzel Burrell is the lone returning starter, but his platoon-mate from last year Aaron Clark is healthy these days. Cam Johnson also got on the field last year as a true freshman and looked like he belonged. John-Kevin Dolce will probably continue in his role as a pass-rush specialist on the outside. On the inside, Darren Childs probably has the inside track on a starting spot by virtue of having playing experience. Steve Greer, Darnell Carter, and Terrence Fells-Danzer are in the mix on the inside as well. The pundits will point to our freshly rebuilt linebacking corps as a reason to count us out again this year, but there's enough competition to keep the talent level high here and not face too much of a drop-off. This one should be more fun to watch than the quarterback battle, mainly because we can never seem to escape quarterback controversy and we'll be saturated with it ad exhaustium all summer.

Cornerback

Drama: Dependent on Vic Hall's role with the offense. Ras-I Dowling is a future first-round pick and has one spot locked the hell down. Opposite him, Chase Minnifield and Rodney McLeod both have a lot of talent as well and the more quarterback Hall plays, the more starting time is at stake in that battle.

Safety

Drama: Medium, but less if Chris Cook ends up here. Which I think he will because Minnifield and McLeod are very promising cornerback talents and the current official roster lists only four safeties. One of whom is pretty strictly a special-teams guy and another of whom is a scout-teamer. Corey Mosley is locked in, and Cook would probably be locked in opposite him. If not, it's probably up to Ausar Walcott.

Punter

Drama: None, because Jimmy Howell has the spot under control and even if he didn't, it's still the punter.

Kicker

Drama: More than I'd like there to be. Probably the same three-horse race as last year with Reyering, Randolph, and Hinkebein vying for the spot.

Of the 24 starting spots, figure that on the offense, six of eleven are locked up tight and on defense, just three of eleven. Kicker is open, punter is not. The six on offense are RT Will Barker, RG B.J. Cabbell, C Jack Shields, LG Austin Pasztor, RB Mikell Simpson, and TE Joe Torchia. LT is penciled as Landon Bradley until fall. Wide receiver is more or less an open competition, but labeling anyone "starter" is a formality because there's lots of playing time for everyone. Quarterback is gonna be bloody.

On defense, your three locked-in starters are DE Matt Conrath, CB Ras-I Dowling, and S Corey Mosley. The NT spot is in good hands with the aforementioned platoon, and the other DE spot should hopefully work itself out nice and clean, so the defensive line is in fine shape. The secondary is fine too - most of the battles are between proven and experienced players. As for linebacker, write all the names on little slips of paper and toss 'em in the air. Whichever land face-up are your starters. It's that wide-open. Bob Trott has his work cut out for him.